U of T Mississauga receives over $3.2 million in NSERC grant funding

Researchers from across seven departments at UTM have received more than $3.2 million in awards to fund projects on topics such as transgender identity, native and non-native plants, and online assistive interfaces.

Professor Marc Johnson,from the Department of Biology, is one of 20 faculty members at UTM to have received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). He says it will go a long way to support his research on the process of plant defences against herbivores.

“The NSERC funds will help us to establish a better, more comprehensive understanding of the biology of plant-herbivore interactions,” says Johnson.

On top of the five year $325,000 Discovery Grant he received, Johnson was awarded the Discovery Accelerator Supplement that will provide him with an additional $120,000 over three years. Johnson says the funds will support the training of personnel in his lab, including undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The funding will also be used for fieldwork at sites related to the research, as well as for material and equipment, such as the use of greenhouse and growth-chamber facilities.

Johnson’s research, which is run out of the EvoEco Lab at UTM, explores a range of questions from genetics, chemistry, community ecology and evolution in relation to plants and plant-animal interactions. His lab focuses on understanding ecological interactions between plants and animals and how these systems drive the evolution of these organisms, but also how evolution influences the ecological patterns and processes within complex communities.

“My long-term goal is to develop a mechanistic understanding of anti-herbivore defences, and to determine how these defences evolve within and among species,” says Johnson.

"Projects that we will be working on with this grant include trying to understand how crops and wild plants protect themselves against herbivores and pathogens, and examining whether plants can adapt to anthropogenic disturbance such as urbanization."

Along with Johnson and his project “Mechanisms and Evolution of Plant Defence Against Herbivores,” the other UTM researchers awarded Discovery Grants are:

Through the Discovery research programs, NSERC funds over 4,000 awards, with researchers across Canada receiving more than $465 million dollars. The programs include funds for scholarships, fellowships, research supplements and equipment grants. For the full list of recipients, please see NSERC’s website.